The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg

by Deborah Eisenberg

“So,” Isobel said.

  “Well,” Lynnie said.

  “Yes,” Isobel said.

  “I’ll wrap up some things for your mother if you want,” Lynnie said. “I’ve got a new pâté I think she’ll like. And her favorite crackers have come in.”

  “Lovely,” Isobel said. “Thanks.” She pushed back a curving lock of hair and scanned the shelves as though waiting for some information to appear on them. “So Mother comes into your store.”

  “Oh, yes,” Lynnie said.

  “Funny,” Isobel said. Isobel looked like anyone else now, Lynnie understood with a little shock. Very pretty, but like anyone else. Only her hair, with its own marvelous life, was still extraordinary. “How’s your mother, by the way?” Isobel said.

  “All right,” Lynnie said, and glanced at her. “So far.”

  “That’s good,” Isobel said opaquely.

  “And at least she’s not such a terror anymore,” Lynnie said. “She’s living up north with Frank now.”

  “Frank…” Isobel said.

  “Frank,” Lynnie said. She reached up to the roll of thick waxed paper and tore a piece off thunderously. “My brother. The little one.”

  “Oh, yes,” Isobel said. “Of course. You know, this feels so peculiar—being here, seeing you. The whole place stopped for me, really, when I went away.”

  “I’m sure,” Lynnie said, flushing. “Well, we still exist. Our lives keep going on. I have the store, and people come into it. Your mother comes in. Cissy Haddad comes in. Ross comes in, Claire comes in. All six of their children come in….”

  “Six—” Isobel stared at Lynnie; her laugh was just a breath. “Well, I guess that means they stayed together, anyway.”

  “Mostly,” Lynnie said. But Isobel only waited, and looked at her. “There was a while there, a few years ago, when he moved in with an ex-student of his. Claire got in the van with the four youngest—Emily and Bo were already at school—and took off. It didn’t last too long, of course, the thing with the girl, and of course Claire came back. After that they sold the stone house. To a broker, I heard.”

  “Oh,” Isobel said. Absently she picked up an apple from a mound on the counter and looked into its glossy surface as though it were a mirror.

  “They’re renovating a farmhouse now,” Lynnie said. “It’s much smaller.”

  “Too bad,” Isobel said, putting down the apple.

  “Yes.”

  “Was she pretty?” Isobel asked.

  “Who?” Lynnie said. “Ross’s girl? Not especially.”

  “Ah,” Isobel said, and Lynnie looked away, ashamed of herself.

  Isobel started to speak but didn’t. She scanned the shelves again vaguely, then smiled over at Lynnie. “You know what else is funny?” she said. “When I woke up this morning, I looked across the street. And I saw this woman going out the door of your old house, and just for an instant I thought, There’s Lynnie. And then I thought, No, it can’t be—that person’s all grown up.”

  For a long time after Isobel had left town, Lynnie would do what she could to avoid running into Ross or Claire; and eventually when she saw them it would seem to her not only that her feeling about them had undergone an alteration but that they themselves were different in some way. Over the years it became all too clear that this was true: their shine had been tarnished by a slight fussiness—they had come to seem like people who were anxious about being rained on.

  Newcomers might have been astonished to learn that there was a time when people had paused in their dealings with one another to look as Ross walked down the street with Claire or the children. Recent arrivals to the town—additions to the faculty of the college, the businessmen and bankers who were now able to live in country homes and still work in their city offices from computer terminals—what was it they saw when Ross and Claire passed by? Fossil forms, Lynnie thought. Museum reproductions. It was the Claire and Ross of years ago who were vivid, living. A residual radiance clung to objects they’d handled and places where they’d spent time. The current Ross and Claire were lightless, their own aftermath.

  Once in a while, though—it happened sometimes when she encountered one of them unexpectedly—Lynnie would see them as they had been. For an instant their sleeping power would flash, but then their dimmed present selves might greet Lynnie, with casual and distant politeness, and a breathtaking pain would cauterize the exquisitely reworked wound.

  It is summer when Lynnie and Isobel first come upon Ross and Claire. Lynnie and Isobel live across the street from one another, but Isobel is older and has better things to do with her time than see Lynnie. And because Lynnie’s mother works at the plant for unpredictable stretches, on unpredictable shifts, Lynnie frequently must look after her younger brothers. Still, when Lynnie is free, she is often able to persuade Isobel to do something, particularly in the summers, when Isobel is bored brainless.

  They take bicycle expeditions then, during those long summers, often along the old highway. The highway is silent, lined with birchwoods, and has several alluring and mysterious features—among them a dark, green wooden restaurant with screened windows, and a motel, slightly shabby, where there are always, puzzlingly, several cars parked. Leading from the highway is a wealth of dirt roads, on one of which Lynnie and Isobel find a wonderful house.

  The house is stone, and stands empty on a hill. Clouds float by it, making great black shadows swing over the sloping meadows below with their cows and barns and wildflowers. Inside, in the spreading coolness, the light flows as variously clear and shaded as water. Trees seem to crowd in the dim recesses. The house is just there, enclosing part of the world: the huge fireplace could be the site of gatherings that take place once every hundred, or once every thousand, years. The girls walk carefully when they visit, fearful of churning up the delicate maze of silence.

  For several summers, the house has been theirs, but one day, the summer that Lynnie is twelve and Isobel is just turning fourteen, there is a van parked in front. Lynnie and Isobel wheel their bicycles stealthily into the woods across the road and walk as close as they dare, crouching down opposite the house, well hidden, to watch.

  Three men and a woman carry bundles and cartons into the house. Bundles and cartons and large pieces of furniture sit outside, where two small children tumble around among them, their wisps of voices floating high into the birdcalls and branches above Lynnie and Isobel. The woman is slight, like a child herself, with a shiny braid of black hair down her back, and there is no question about which of the men she, the furniture, and the children belong to.

  Lynnie squints, and seems to draw closer, hovering just too far off to see his face. Then, for just a fraction of a second, she penetrates the distance.

  The sun moves behind Lynnie and Isobel, and the man to whom everything belongs waves the others inside, hoisting up the smaller child as he follows. Just as Lynnie and Isobel reach cautiously for their bicycles, the man looks out again, shading his eyes. They freeze, and for a moment he stands there peering out toward them.

  Neither Lynnie nor Isobel suggests going on—to town, or to the gorge, or anywhere. They ride back the way they’ve come, and, without discussion, go upstairs to Isobel’s room.

  Isobel lies down across her flounced bed while Lynnie wanders around absently examining Isobel’s things, which she knows so well: Isobel’s books, her stuffed animals, her china figurines.

  “Do you think we’re the first people to see them?” Lynnie says.

  “The first people ever?” Isobel says, flopping over onto her side.

  Lynnie stares out Isobel’s window at her own house. She doesn’t know what to do when Isobel’s in a bad mood. She should just leave, she thinks.

  From here, her house looks as though it were about to slide to the ground. A large aluminum cannister clings to its side like a devouring space monster. “Do you want to go back out and do something?” she asks.

  “What would we do?” Isobel says, into her pillow. “There’s nothing to do.
There’s not one single thing to do here. And now would you mind sitting down, please, Lynnie? Because you happen to be driving me insane.”

  As she leaves Isobel’s, Lynnie pauses before crossing the street to watch her brothers playing in front of the house. They look weak and bony, but the two older boys fight savagely. A plastic gun lies near them on the ground. Frank, as usual, is playing by himself, but he is just as banged up as they are. His skin is patchy and chapped—summer and winter he breathes through his mouth, and even this temperate sun is strong enough to singe the life out of his fine, almost white hair. She looks just like him, Lynnie thinks. Except chunky. “Chunky” is the word people use.

  Inside, Lynnie’s mother is stationed in front of the TV. At any hour Lynnie’s mother might be found staring at the television, and beyond it, through the front window, as though something of importance were due to happen out on the street. The television is almost always on, and when men friends come to visit, Lynnie’s mother turns up the volume, so that other noises bleed alarmingly through the insistent rectangle of synthetic sound.

  Lynnie brings a paper napkin from the kitchen and inserts it between her mother’s glass of beer and the table. “May I inquire…?” her mother says.

  “Isobel’s mother says you should never leave a glass on the furniture,” Lynnie says. “It makes a ring.”

  Lynnie’s mother looks at her, then lifts the glass and crumples the napkin. “Thank you,” she says, turning back to her program. “I’ll remember that.” A thin wave of laughter comes from the TV screen, and little shapes jump and throb there, but Lynnie is thinking about the people from the stone house.

  Lynnie’s mother can be annoyed when she knows that Lynnie has been playing with Isobel; Isobel’s father works for the same company Lynnie’s mother works for, but not in the plant. He works in the office, behind a big desk. Whenever Lynnie is downstairs in Isobel’s house and Isobel’s father walks in, Lynnie scuttles as though she might be trodden underfoot. In fact, Isobel’s father hardly notices her; perhaps he doesn’t even know from one of her visits to the next that she is the same little girl. But he booms down at Isobel, scrutinizing her from his great height, and sometimes even lifts her way up over his head.

  Isobel’s mother is tall and smells good and dresses in neat wool. Sometimes when she sees Lynnie hesitating at the foot of the drive she opens the door, with a bright, special smile. “Lynnie, dear,” she says, “would you like to come in and see Isobel? Or have a snack?” But sometimes, when Lynnie and Isobel are playing, Isobel’s mother calls Isobel away for a whispered conference, from which Isobel returns to say that Lynnie has to go now, for this reason or that.

  When Lynnie looks out the window of the room she shares with Frank, she can see Isobel’s large, arched window, and if the light is just right she can see Isobel’s bed, too, with its white flounces, and a heavenly blue haze into which, at this distance, the flowers of Isobel’s wallpaper melt.

  One day, doing errands for her mother in town, Lynnie sees the woman from the stone house coming out of the bakery with the children, each of whom carefully holds a large, icing-covered cookie. The woman bends down and picks up one of the children, smiling—unaware, Lynnie observes, that people are noticing her.

  Lynnie sees the woman several times, and then one day she sees the man.

  She has anticipated his face exactly. But when he smiles at her, the little frown line between his eyes stays. And the marvelousness of this surprise causes a sensation across the entire surface of her skin, like the rippling of leaves that demonstrates a subtle shift of air.

  When Lynnie sees Isobel she can’t help talking about the people from the stone house. She describes variations in their clothing or demeanor, compiling a detailed body of knowledge while Isobel lies on her bed, her eyes closed. “Should we give them names?” Lynnie says one afternoon.

  “No,” Isobel says.

  But Lynnie can’t stop. “Why not?” she says, after a moment.

  “‘Why not?’” Isobel says.

  “Don’t, Isobel,” Lynnie pleads.

  “‘Don’t, Isobel,’” Isobel says, making her hands into a tube to speak through. Her voice is hollow and terrifying.

  Lynnie breathes heavily through her mouth. “Why not?” she says.

  “Why not,” Isobel says, sitting up and sighing, “is because they already have names.”

  “I know,” Lynnie says, mystified.

  “Their names,” Isobel says, “are Ross and Claire.”

  Lynnie stares at her.

  “They had dinner at Cissy Haddad’s house one night,” Isobel says. “Ross is going to be teaching medieval literature at the college. He’s in Cissy’s father’s department.”

  “‘Department’?” Lynnie says.

  “Yes,” Isobel says.

  Lynnie frowns. “How do you know?” she asks. How long has Isobel known?

  Isobel shrugs. “I’m just telling you what Cissy said.” She looks at Lynnie. “I think Cissy has a crush on him.”

  “What else did Cissy say?” Lynnie asks unhappily.

  “Nothing,” Isobel says. “Oh. Except that he’s thirty-five and Claire’s only twenty-three. She used to be one of his students.”

  “One of his students?” Lynnie says.

  “‘One of his—’” Isobel begins, and then flops down on the bed again. “Oh, Lynnie.”

  One day Lynnie sees Cissy Haddad in the drugstore. Lynnie hurries to select the items on her mother’s list, then waits until Cissy goes to the counter. “Hi,” she says, getting into line behind Cissy. She feels herself turning red.

  “Oh, hi, Lynnie,” Cissy says, and smiles wonderfully. “Are you having a fun summer?”

  “Yes,” Lynnie says.

  “What’re you doing?” Cissy says.

  “Just mostly looking after my brothers,” Lynnie says. She feels bewildered by Cissy’s dazzling smile, her pretty sundress. “And riding around and things with Isobel.”

  “That’s good,” Cissy says. And then, instead of saying something useful about Isobel, which might lead to Ross and Claire, she asks, “Are you coming to high school this year? I can’t remember.”

  “No,” Lynnie says. “Isobel is.”

  Cissy peers into Lynnie’s basket of embarrassing purchases.

  “What are you getting?” she asks.

  “Things for my mother,” Lynnie says, squirming. “What about you?”

  “Oh,” Cissy says. “Just lipstick.”

  One fall day when Lynnie gets home from school, her mother summons her over the noise from the TV. “You got a phone call,” she says shortly. “The lady wants you to call her back.” And Lynnie knows, while her mother is still speaking, whom the call was from.

  Lynnie dials, and the soft, dark shadow of Claire’s voice answers. She is looking for someone to help with the children on a regular basis, she explains, several afternoons a week. She got Lynnie’s name from Tom Haddad’s daughter. She knows that Lynnie is very young, but this is nothing difficult—just playing with the children upstairs or outside so that she can have a couple of hours to paint. “I thought I would be able to do so much here,” she says, as though Lynnie were an old friend, someone her own age, “but there’s never enough time, is there?”

  “I’ll need you just as much with the boys,” Lynnie’s mother says later. “And you’d better remember your homework.”

  “I will,” Lynnie says, though, actually, beyond a certain point, it scarcely matters; however hard she tries, she lags far behind in school, and her teachers no longer try to stifle their exclamations of impatience. “I’ll do my homework.” And her mother makes no further objections; Lynnie will be earning money.

  Claire leads Lynnie around in the house that used to be Lynnie and Isobel’s. Now it is all filled up with the lives of these people.

  Everywhere there is a regal disorder of books, and in the biggest room downstairs, with its immense fireplace, there are sofas and, at one end, a vast table. A thic
ket of canvases and brushes has sprung up in a corner, and Lynnie sees pictures of the table on whose surface objects are tensely balanced, and sketch after sketch of Ross and the children. “What do you think?” Claire says, and it is a moment before Lynnie realizes what Claire is asking her.

  “I like them,” Lynnie says. But in fact they frighten her—the figures seem caught, glowing in a webby dimness.

  In the kitchen huge pots and pans flash, and a great loaf of brown bread lies out on a counter. Claire opens the door to Ross’s study; stacks and stacks of paper, more books than Lynnie has ever seen breed from its light-shot core.

  Upstairs Bo and Emily are engrossed in a sprawling project of blocks. Emily explains the dreamlike construction to Lynnie, gracefully accepting Bo’s effortful elaborations, and when Lynnie leaves both children reach up to her with their tanned little arms.

  Twice a week Lynnie goes to the stone house. Bo and Emily have big, bright, smooth wooden toys, some of which were made by Ross. Lynnie strokes the toys; she runs her hand over them like a blind person; she runs her hand over the pictures in Bo and Emily’s beautiful storybooks. But then Claire counts out Lynnie’s money, and Lynnie is to go. And at the first sight of her own house she is slightly sickened, as upon disembarkation—not by the firm ground underfoot but by a ghostly rocking of water.

  When Claire finishes painting for the afternoon, she calls Lynnie and Bo and Emily into the kitchen. For a while, although Bo and Emily chatter and nuzzle against her, Claire seems hardly to know where she is. But gradually she returns, and makes for herself and Lynnie a dense, sweet coffee in a little copper pot, which must be brought to the boil three times. They drink it from identical tiny cups, and Lynnie marvels, looking at Claire, that she herself is there.

  Some afternoons Ross is around. He announces that he will be in his study, working, but sooner or later he always appears in the kitchen, and talks about things he is reading for his book.

  “What do you think, Lynnie?” he asks once. He has just proposed an idea for a new chapter, to which Claire’s response was merely “Possible.”